Electronic devices such as cordless and/or wireless telephones are often used in a handsfree mode where an audio signal received from the far-end (referred to as the receive signal or the far-end signal) is rendered by a loudspeaker of the electronic device. An echo of the rendered far-end signal may be captured together with an audio signal from the near-end (referred to as the near-end signal) by a microphone of the electronic device, thereby yielding the transmit signal which is to be transmitted to the sender of the far-end signal. As such, the transmit signal may comprise an echo of the far-end signal which may lead to annoying artefacts for the sender of the far-end signal.
Typical electronic devices comprise echo suppression units or echo suppression circuits for removing the echo from the transmit signal. These echo suppression circuits typically attenuate the transmit signal depending on the received far-end signal. As a result, the transmit signal may be strongly attenuated in the case of a strong far-end signal (e.g. when the far-end signal is comprised of high speech activity), thereby leading to a reduction of duplexity (i.e. a reduction of the capability of an undisturbed two-way (listening and talking) voice communication).
The present document addresses the above mentioned short-coming of echo suppression circuits and describes a method and a system for increasing duplexity, while at the same time keeping the artefacts caused by the echo low.